HARTFORD -- Jim Calhoun was breathing fire down his players' necks in practice the day before, but it didn't translate into a whole lot of effort for the first 30 minutes or so against West Virginia Monday night.

UConn trailed by as many as 10 points midway through the second half as it continued to turn the ball over too much and failed to grab a single offensive rebound.

Then, out of nowhere -- and perhaps partly inspired by a technical called on Calhoun -- the Huskies came to life. Andre Drummond and Jeremy Lamb, specifically, took charge, the Huskies started attacking the boards with vigor and wound up with a much-needed, 64-57 win at the XL Center.

The 17th-ranked Huskies snapped a brief but ugly two-game losing streak to improve to 13-3 overall and 3-2 in the Big East.

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"We knew we had to get a win," said Lamb, who scored 13 of his game-high 25 points over the final 11 minutes. "We had to prove to ourselves that we have fight. We had to prove that we do care about this team. That's what we did the last stretch, we just really played hard. We did what we had to do to win the game, and that was a huge win for us."

West Virginia fell to 12-5, 3-2.

Drummond followed Lamb in the scoring column with 20 points while also hauling in a game-high 11 rebounds and three blocks -- including a Darryl Bryant 3-point attempt in the waning seconds that sealed the deal.

"Andre Drummond was special tonight," said Calhoun. "He hasn't been special all season -- he's been good -- as you would expect from a freshman. But tonight, he was special."

Drummond's biggest play of the night came with 1:27 left and the Huskies clinging to a one-point (58-57) lead. Lamb misfired on a 3-pointer, but Drummond grabbed the rebound and hit a short baseline jumper -- one of several such shots he made throughout the night in between rafter-shaking dunks.

West Virginia wouldn't score again. Kevin Jones missed a 3-pointer with 15.7 seconds left, Alex Oriakhi grabbed the rebound and had it knocked out of bounds by a Mountaineer player. Lamb swished a pair of free throws, and Drummond's block of Bryant led to a Lamb layup at the buzzer.

"Late in the game, we needed scoring," said Lamb. "They ran some great plays for me to get open and be able to knock down shots. Drummond, also, he played great tonight."

UConn trailed 33-28 at halftime as it had no answer for Jones, the Big East scoring and rebounding leader, and fell behind by 10 after Deniz Kilicli's lefty hook shot with 11:25 left. But the Huskies followed with a head-spinning, 15-2 run over the next six minutes, started by a Lamb alley-oop dunk and book-ended by a Lamb 3-pointer.

West Virginia would tie it at 55, but Lamb knocked down a wing jumper with 2:34 to play and the Huskies never again trailed.

Shortly before UConn started its run, Calhoun was hit with a technical foul by referee Pat Driscoll after arguing an over-the-back call on Drummond during a timeout. It seemed to light a fire under the Huskies, even if some of them didn't even know at the time that Calhoun had been T'd up.

"I told them, 'If we're not going to fight, they might throw me out of here, but I'm going to fight,'" Calhoun said. "It wasn't planned, but we just couldn't keep them going the way we were going."

Said freshman Ryan Boatright: "Coach has got our back, he's on the refs. If he sees something going on, he tells us not to say anything to the refs and he'll take care of it."

Oriakhi finished with eight points and three blocks in one of his better games in a while, Boatright scored seven off the bench, and though point guard Shabazz Napier went scoreless, he did dole out eight assists (to go with four turnovers).

Jones led WVU with 22 points. He buried three of WVU's six first-half 3-pointers and had 13 points at the break, helping the Mountaineers to a 33-28 lead. UConn was burdened by familiar problems in the opening half: nine turnovers, zero offensive rebounds, poor 3-point defense.

However, the Mountaineers missed all 10 of their 3-point attempts in the latter half.

RIM RATTLINGS

?Boatright had a big steal and dunk to tie the game at 48 with 7:08 remaining. He had raised Calhoun's ire earlier in the half, however, after a bad turnover, followed by some backtalk to the coach.

Calhoun raced out to midcourt during a timeout to confront Boatright face-to-face.

"I don't even really remember what he said," Boatright recalled. "It was just the heat of the moment. Coach is going to be Coach. That's what he does all the time. He does it to everybody. I made a mistake, and you've just got to be culpable and be able to play through it."